


Wax Wings

by Sweetsigh



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweetsigh/pseuds/Sweetsigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur always wanted to fly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wax Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Ho shit! I totally forgot about the AE-Summer challenge. This is unbeta'd and semi-proofread because I am doing a camp counseling thing for an art studio and have to be around little children and GLUE for 8 hours a day and if I have to do extra work, I will shoot myself.
> 
> GO TEAM ANGST!!

_He’s flying, flying, flying._

\--

Arthur loves flying. It’s as simple as that.

When he was young, he’d dream of flying. Looking back, he realizes that it’s the only thing he can remember dreaming of. It’s clichéd, yes, but he couldn’t help it if he loved that rush of wind, the resistance of air pushing back, his hair whipping around his face as he flew and flew, free from everything and everyone.

He hated waking up.

Every time he woke up in the morning still wrapped in his confining superman bedsheets, he would despair a little. He’d toss the blankets away, stand up and jump a few times, hoping he would start flying again, as if the little springs he made could break that gravity barrier. It never worked.

\--

 _There are tears in his eyes from the wind against his face. He loves it. Tears of happiness, he would have called them._

\--

Arthur has a second chance at flying when he joins the military. Air force. It will take some time before they let him actually fly one, but they let him jump. Or rather, it was required for him to learn to jump from a plane, but he likes to consider it a decision of his own.

Jumping is a lot like flying, he decides, just with a parachute on his back. The rush and elation are still there, and more often than not, when he’s soaring towards the ground, he lets out a whoop of exhilaration. All in all, it’s pretty much the same except he has to pull the chute open to stop and land safely.

Sometimes, he doesn’t want to pull it.

\--

 _He’s free, free as a bird._

\--

He’s not allowed to jump anymore.

He’s walking towards the plane when it happens. No, no, it starts when he wakes up, that little dizzying ‘whoosh’ing sound in his right ear. He writes it off as residue of one of his flying dreams and carries on with his day. But when it actually happens, he’s heading off for an afternoon jump.

The whooshing sound he’d been hearing suddenly gets louder and he freezes in confusion. Without moving, he darts his eyes around as if his surroundings could tell him why he hears strange noises in one ear but not the other. He’s pretty sure he’s panicking and he vaguely hears someone calling his name, but something pops and for a second he thinks a gun went off and drops low and sprints for cover. It’s only when an officer approaches him a few seconds later does he realizes that he _can’t hear anything_ from his right ear.

They do several tests but they can’t find anything wrong. The doc says something about Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss and how it’s not uncommon, but all Arthur can think is _can he still jump?_ (he can’t) and _It’s going to get better, right?_ (it’s not) and _would they fix him?_ (they won’t). He’s sent home on leave to get some rest but it’s probably because the doc and his officer see how badly he was taking it (he punched that stupid male nurse in the face when he made a rather insensitive joke, but that was completely justified, alright?).

He’s at the gym, hands wrapped and gloved, and he’s taking out his stress on a punching bag. He can’t fly anymore, he can’t jump, can’t fly.

He smashes his fist into the sandbag over and over again, punching it like punishment to whatever let this happen to him, punching it like it would let him jump again.

\--

 _The air envelops him, a soft plush cushion that he flies through as he looks up at the sky._

\--

The Air Force didn’t have a chance to teach him fly, but perhaps Mallorie Cobb can.

Mal (“Mallorie sounds like a name for an old grey grandma, and as you can see, I am neither old, grey, nor a grandmama. Call me Mal”) tells him he can do the impossible in these dreams, he could fly if he wanted to. She’s a lovely woman, telling him everything she can about these dreams without breaking confidentiality. She even laughs and tells a story about how her husband asked her to marry him in a dream.

Arthur pretends to take his time deciding, but he already knew his answer when the woman said the word ‘fly’.

Shared dreaming is an interesting concept. And to tell the truth, he’s pretty excited. PASIV technology is still pretty new and there are still plenty unknown risks, but anyone who has worked with it will tell you it’s addicting, amazing, astonishing. Implausibly plausible.

He’s disappointed.

He can’t fly in the dream. He supposes he should have known that Mallorie Cobb was just using flying as a metaphor, but these are dreams, where the impossible becomes possible. The PASIV doesn’t make dreams come true, so he still can’t fly. But he finds the next best thing.

When they need to wake up, they’re standing on the Statue of Liberty, and Mal turns to him, takes him by the shoulders and pushes.

Arthur falls.

\--

 _It probably should have been cold, flying so high and so fast at times. But it’s not. It’s not quite warm either though. It’s … just right._

\--

He considers getting a cochlear implant or wearing a hearing aid, but he decides against it. In dreams, he still has perfect hearing. In reality, he doesn’t need to fight anymore.

The hearing in his right ear isn’t _totally_ gone, it’s just extremely faint. He can still discriminate some sounds; it’s just his threshold that’s been shot to hell. Which doesn’t mean anything nor does it help his denial, but then again, he’s always been good at denial.

He does learn to read lips and sign language just in case. And if he ends up wearing a hearing aid when only Dom and Mal are around, they don’t mention it.

\--

 

 _The sky is beautiful. Blue, blue, and blue all around, white clouds like friends and mothers and lovers._

\--

PASIV tech is a bust in the military. Causes insanity, they say. Dom, Mal, and Arthur each grab a machine and make a run for it. They almost end up on the Most Wanted page of the US government, but Arthur had learned to hack like a god and messed with so many servers and information outlets no one but he is quite sure of all the details.

The Cobbs join a team of researchers funded by a bored billionaire with nothing better to do. Arthur burrows underground, sniffing out jobs he can use his skills for.

He makes his name known in the illegal dream share business in just three jobs.

\--

 _He rolls to look at the ground. Green. So green. A patchwork quilt of grass and wheat and corn. An ocean of plains. He could drown in that glorious green._

\--

Arthur meets Eames on his seventh job. He’s working intently in his usual spot near a window when a hand falls heavily on his shoulder. It takes only three quarters of a second for Arthur’s heart to jump a beat and for Arthur to take that hand and twist it around his offender’s back.

It’s a completely awkward and rushed movement.

Sure, Arthur has kept in shape and regularly sparred with people, but he’s unused to using his fighting skills in home territory where he’s sitting, surrounded by his paperwork and his laptop still in front of him.

The chair is tipped over from a literal kick, the legs halfway in between him and the man with one knee on the ground, one hand pinned to his back, and the other hand up in a gesture of peace while Arthur stands hunched, breathing fast and leg bruising from being knocked by the chair.

Terri the Extractor and Jennifer the Architect are shouting and telling him that it’s alright, that’s Eames, the forger they hired.

Arthur lets go, apologizing for his actions but immediately takes it back the moment Eames opens his mouth.

“It’s quite alright. If it’s you, I wouldn’t mind being pinned down,” he winks, standing up and brushing himself off. And if that weren’t bad enough, he says, “But seriously, are you deaf? How did you not hear me?”

Arthur does not shout, he does not freak out, and he does not change his face. Letting others know their pointman was half deaf was not a suggested idea in this business. He gives their forger a subtle once-over. Loud was exactly how he would describe Eames, from his laughter to his movements to his clothing. So instead, he twitches his lips, faking an almost smile. “You’re right. I must be deaf. I can’t believe I didn’t hear that atrocious shirt screaming at me.”

To which the man grins and says, “I’m sorry you don’t approve of my sartorial choices. Would you like me to take it off?”

Awkward and rushed become the words used to describe their relationship.

\--

 _Somewhere inside of him, he knows he should stop, that this isn’t really healthy. But liquid joy is pulsing through his veins. Nothing could make him happier than flying like this._

\--

Eames is the best forger he’s ever seen. It doesn’t really say much, as Arthur has only worked with two other forgers. But time passes and when Eames says he’s the best in the business, Arthur starts to believe him.

They work together often when forgers are required. Arthur doesn’t like working with sub-quality people. An extractor who says the wrong thing at the wrong time, a forger who can’t properly maintain the forge, or an architect who can’t even remember his own damned design spells only trouble for Arthur. And trouble is spelt with bullet in his shoulder, a knife to his thigh, and more memorably, being dropped into the Pacific by an angry drug lord from Chile.

So usually, he takes high end jobs with Jeremy who cracks safes like nutcrackers crack nuts and Eames who can forge saints to God. The three of them are known for having a 100% success rate until Jeremy gets shot in the knee and can’t properly run anymore.

“Eh, I’ll be fine. I was looking for a reason to retire anyway,” he tells them. “It’s not like I was planning on running a marathon or anything. I think I’ve had enough of running for this lifetime.”

Arthur and Eames glance at each other, shrugging because neither could imagine a life without doing what they do. If Jeremy was content with living in a big house with a grape vineyard as a front yard, who were they to tell him otherwise?

“Make sure you two swing by once in a while, alright? Need to know both of you are still alive and bickering like an old married couple for the world to be right,” Jeremy jokes. They haven’t honestly fought each other in over a year, which is like a decade in the world of dreamshare, haven’t fought since Eames shoved him and asked what the hell him problem was and Arthur decided he could trust them with his secret and told them about his hearing loss. Jeremy knows this. However, the rest of the dream share community does not know this, and none of them really care.

They grin and clap his shoulder and tell him to have good beer when they visit.

\---

 _”I’d want to die by falling.” Arthur tells Mal when she asks._

 _“Falling? That seems a little gruesome, don’t you think, my dear?” She considers this seriously, not telling him he shouldn’t be thinking thoughts like these like Dom would have told him. “I would have thought you’d like to go out with a bang. Car chases and guns and explosions and all.”_

 _Arthur laughs. “That’s probably how I’ll end up dying. But falling just seems like a good way to go for someone like me.”_

 _Mal nods, thinking he meant something entirely different. “Like a kick.”_

 _Like flying._

\---

They become oddly domestic for international thieves. They share a rented apartment or a hotel room, and soon a bed; Arthur cooks dinner while Eames works on forging passports, papers, paintings.

They take jobs together, easy and lucrative, Eames extracting and forging, Arthur acting as security. But for the most part, they simply travel and see the world. Arthur takes Eames to meet Mal and Cobb, who are expecting a little girl. Eames takes Arthur to his hometown. They split up when old enemies come calling, find each other when they get rid of the problem.

Most of all, they dream together.

\---  
 _  
“Arthur, this isn’t a dream. Get away from that ledge.”_

 _He turns to Eames, taking in his features, all wide shoulders and muscles and impossibly intelligent eyes. “I know,” he answers, looking back at the canyons._

 _He feels Eames sit down next to him, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the myriad of colors of the canyon. Neither of them have ever been to the Grand Canyons before, so they decided to stop by to watch the sunset. He imagines what it would be like jumping off the edge._

 _“Don’t think I haven’t noticed, Arthur.” Eames sighs with discontent. “Even when we could have waited for the kick, you always choose to find the tallest building to jump off. And when I try to stop you, you always trap me in one of your charming Penrose staircases. Your love for jumping is quite disconcerting.”_

 _Arthur smiles at this. “I miss it, you know.” He pauses to figure out a way to explain it. “Jumping always felt like flying. Back when I was still in the Air Force, I used to love to jump. That’s why I joined dream sharing when I lost my hearing and they wouldn’t let me jump anymore. Mal promised me I could fly.”_

 _“Fly? Mal knows that extreme body modifications are bloody hard to keep up, and to use wings...”_

 _“No.” He laughs, but it sounds a little sad, a little broken, like dreams that could never take flight. “It was just a metaphor, but I wanted to try anyway.” He stands up and looks towards the bleeding sunset._

 _Eames shakes his head. “What you’re doing isn’t flying. You’re falling. It’s not the same.” When Arthur doesn’t answer, he takes it as a cue to keep talking. “You’re just plummeting to the ground. You’re not flying, Arthur.” Again, there is no answer. “You worry me, darling.”_

 _He presses a kiss against Eames’ lips._

\---

Arthur falls.


End file.
